Category Archives: Local government

Mark Pack

Clause 81 of the New Roads and Street Act 1991 is your friend

By Mark Pack | Mon 8th February 2010 - 12:20 pm

You may have been following some of my travails trying to get repairs made to some of those telephone, broadband, traffic light etc boxes which appear on many pavements.

Although  my own local council (Islington) is very good at dealing with them either directly themselves or passing on to the relevant company and ensuring the work is done, other councils, including Haringey and Westminster, are far less so.

Haringey in theory also gets the job done if a member of the public reports a problem to them, but in practice I’ve often found problems of things going wrong or being forgotten.

Worst of …

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Chris White

Chris Clarke: an appreciation

By Chris White | Wed 3rd February 2010 - 11:20 am

This week sees the memorial service for Chris Clarke, former leader of the LGA Liberal Democrat Group

He was always Chris. Even when he gained a knighthood in 2005, he was just very occasionally Sir Chris. No pomposity there.

I came across Chris first of all as Leader of Somerset County Council and thus someone from one of our most successful counties and regions. He was larger than life at the Local Government Association even before he was successfully elected as Leader of its Liberal Democrat Group.

He gave clarity to the Liberal Democrat push within that organisation but also made it clear …

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Also posted in Obituaries | Tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

It’s better by blog: why councils should embrace blogging

By Mark Pack | Tue 2nd February 2010 - 10:20 am

The January edition of Total Politics had the third in a series from me on councils and communicating. The first part, Yes, council websites can, looked at lessons from the Obama campaign for local council use of the internet. The second part, Adding some colour to council emails, looked at ways to make better use of email. Now it’s the turn of blogging.

“Councils should get blogging” – that was one of the headlines generated by a report from the local e-Democracy National e-Government project – back in February 2005.

Yet since then, although internet usage and tools have …

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Also posted in Online politics | Tagged | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

So, what do you make of this graph about gender and politics?

By Mark Pack | Mon 1st February 2010 - 11:20 am

Here’s the proportion of local election candidates of the three main parties who were female over the last twenty-five years. As you can see, proportions for all three parties grew in the late ’80s and since then have stalled (Lib Dems, Conservatives) or only crept up (Labour), all remaining under 40%.

The dips every four years are due to county council elections having a much lower proportion of female candidates than other local elections.

Gender of local election candidates

So, what do you make of this? Does …

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Also posted in News | Tagged | 33 Comments
Mark Pack

‘Hyndburngate’ spying allegations

By Mark Pack | Tue 26th January 2010 - 3:20 pm

Strange goings on in Lancashire:

‘Hyndburngate’ spying allegations

EXTRA CCTV is being installed at the borough council officers amid claims of a ‘Hyndburngate’ involving bosses being spied on.

At Hyndburn’s full council meeting leader Coun Peter Britcliffe accused the Labour group of behaving ‘like the Richard Nixon administration’, claiming documents were being searched during ‘internal break-ins’.

However the Labour group said the allegations were ‘completely unfounded’…

At the meeting Coun Britcliffe said: “There have been internal break-ins in which councillors have been snooping up and down looking at letters.

“We do know that one Labour councillor was found at the back of somebody’s computer in the

…

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Mark Pack

Liberal Democrat Mayor suspended over benefits investigation

By Mark Pack | Tue 26th January 2010 - 7:42 am

From the Camden New Journal:

THE Mayor of Camden, Councillor Omar Faruque Ansari, has been suspended from the Liberal Democrat group tonight (Monday) after he was questioned by benefit investigators.

Council leader Keith Moffitt said he would remain suspended until “a serious investigation” was complete. It is understood Cllr Ansari was questioned by investigators from the Department of Work and Pensions today, although released without any charges being brought. The investigation, however, is ongoing. It does not relate to council funds…

Cllr Moffitt said in a statement tonight: “Councillor Omar Faruque Ansari has today been suspended as a member of  the Liberal Democrat Group on

…

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Mark Pack

Third Conservative councillor switches in Cannock Chase

By Mark Pack | Sat 23rd January 2010 - 1:10 pm

Following on from the switch of Keith and Diane Bennett from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats, a third Conservative councillor in Cannock Chase has now also joined the party:

Councillor Mark Green has resigned from the Council’s Conservative Group and has been accepted as a Member of the Council’s Liberal Democrat Group. Mark represents the the Cannock South Ward.

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Mark Pack

Tackling crime: talking to and involving the public works

By Mark Pack | Wed 20th January 2010 - 10:20 am

The Home Office has recently published a review of the research into how to improve public confidence in the police. One of their conclusions? The very community politics idea, expressed in very New Labour vocabulary, that

The strategies most likely to be effective in improving confidence are initiatives aimed at increasing community engagement. Three out of the four interventions classified in the ‘what works’ evidence all included an element of communicating and engaging with the community (embedding neighbourhood policing; high quality community engagement; and using local-level communications/newsletters).

In other words: talk to people, listen to them and involve them. That is …

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Mark Pack

Two Conservative councillors switch; new Norfolk candidate selected

By Mark Pack | Tue 19th January 2010 - 10:54 pm

Welcome to Canncok Councillors Keith and Diane Bennett, who have switched from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats, and congratulations to Dan Roper who has been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Broadland. Nich Starling says of him:

I am so pleased that my local Lib Dem candidate is genuinely the sort of person I would be proud to go out and campaign for. I wish him luck and will do whatever I can to help him.

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The Voice

Tory councillor’s racist comments censured

By The Voice | Sat 16th January 2010 - 4:28 pm

Here’s what a Conservative borough councillor Smith Benson said at a public meeting in Colne, Pendle, last year:

The problem with Colne is that there are too many takeaways. And too many Pakis, that’s why people don’t come to Colne.”

His comment to the Colne town centre regeneration forum – and which he repeated in the meeting when asked to clarify his remarks – led Lib Dem councillor Tony Greaves to complain that Cllr Benson had breached the local authority’s code of conduct: this has been upheld, and the matter has now been referred to Pendle Council’s standards committee.

The BBC reports:

The

…

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Alex Foster

Empty homes policy launch

By Alex Foster | Thu 14th January 2010 - 3:19 pm

Details arrive at the Voice of a launch of our General Election housing policy:

The Liberal Democrats today set out plans to bring a quarter of a million empty homes back into use, making homes available for people who need them and creating 65,000 jobs.

There are over 760,000 empty properties across England which are no longer used as homes but can be brought back into use with some investment. People who own these homes will get a grant or a cheap loan to renovate them so they can be used: grants if the home is for social housing, loans for

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Mark Pack

Nine Liberal Democrats shortlisted in Councillor of the Year awards

By Mark Pack | Thu 14th January 2010 - 1:50 pm

Congratulations to all those shortlisted in the various categories for the Councillor of the Year awards, run by the Local Government Information Unit and CCLA.

Particular congratulations to the nine Liberal Democrats:

Warren Bradley (Liverpool) – Leader of the Year
Carla Butler (Newhaven) – Young Councillor of the Year
Alexis Rowell (Camden) and Paul Tilsley (Birmingham) – Sustainability councillor of the year
Alex Folkes (Cornwall) and Dennis Meredith (Northants) – New Councillor of the Year
Daisy Benson (Reading) and Alex Perkins (Canterbury) – Online Councillor of the Year
Tracy Ismail (Islington) – Community Champion of the Year

Good luck to them all.

Full details of all the shortlists …

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Chris White

Opinion: Snow’s here – watch out for the Russians

By Chris White | Tue 12th January 2010 - 11:41 am

So: whose fault is it? The winter chaos I mean.

It was fun before Christmas but we have all grown heartily sick of it and there is now rumour of crisis. The Independent on Sunday’s front page was a bumper crop of statistics: £690 million in lost production, 14,188 cancelled trains, 25 deaths and so on. The Army is on standby in Kent, the fire brigade is delivering meals on wheels and farmers report that they can’t get crops out of the ground. Meanwhile there are warnings of gas shortages.

Locally people are cursing councils for failing to grit roads and pavements. …

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Stephen Tall

Official: Lib Dems the winners in 2009 local by-elections

By Stephen Tall | Wed 23rd December 2009 - 3:45 pm

There’s been a fair degree of criticism of the Lib Dems’ parliamentary by-election performances in the last couple of years: the 2006 ‘glory days’ of beating Labour in Dunfermline, and coming oh-so-close against the Tories in Bromley have seemed an increasingly distant memory. So, let’s celebrate an arena where the party is doing well: local government by-elections. And not merely doing well: in fact, doing better than the other two major parties.

(Hat-tips to John’s Liberal Revolution blog and to middle englander on the Vote 2007 website).

Here are the summary results of the 280 by-elections held during 2009:

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The Voice

Tory councillor in Cheltenham defects to Lib Dems

By The Voice | Wed 16th December 2009 - 6:57 pm

Here’s the text of the press release from Cheltenham Lib Dems just received by The Voice – the defection of Cllr Klara Sudbury from the Tories to Lib Dems takes Cheltenham Borough council from Lib Dem minority control (20 seats out of 40) to overall control.

County and borough councillor Klara Sudbury has today announced that she will be leaving the Conservative Party and applying to join the Liberal Democrats and the party’s groups on the county and borough councils.

Statement by county and district councillor Klara Sudbury

‘After giving it a great deal of thought I have decided to leave

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Iain Roberts

OnePlace to rate them – shame it’s down

By Iain Roberts | Wed 9th December 2009 - 9:58 am

The Government’s new OnePlace site, where you can find out all about the performance of your local authority and its partners, had gone down within minutes of being plugged on Radio 4’s Today programme and, if the Conservatives win the next election, may be down permanently.

The rating system marks a significant break with the previous star ratings awarded to local authorities.

One outcome is that old and new ratings can’t be compared – they measure different things about different organisations. The new assessments are largely in the form of a narrative. Instead of long tables …

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Also posted in News | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Boundary Committee recommends new unitary authorities

By Mark Pack | Tue 8th December 2009 - 8:50 am

The Boundary Committee for England has just published its report into local government arrangements in Devon (including the Lib Dem minority control council of Exeter), Norfolk and Suffolk.

It says:

In Devon, the Committee has put forward a single unitary council for the current Devon county area.

In Norfolk, the Committee has put forward a single unitary council for the whole of Norfolk.

In Suffolk, the Committee has made two proposals: a unitary county of Suffolk (the Committee’s preferred alternative proposal for Suffolk); and a two-unitary pattern comprising an Ipswich & Felixstowe authority and a Rural Suffolk authority.

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Chris White

Quangos Quake but Tories Trim

By Chris White | Mon 7th December 2009 - 1:54 pm

One of the least surprising pieces of news last week was that Caroline Spelman had abandoned the Tory Party’s pledge to abolish Regional Development Agencies: these will now ‘evolve’ into Local Enterprise Partnerships.

Yet only a few short weeks ago, Lord Hanningfield was telling people that the Tories would ditch RDAs by Order in Council (legally impossible but heh – we’ll be a new government, so why worry?).

To be fair, Spelman does little to conceal the u-turn: no pretence here that RDAs will be abolished to be replaced by Something Totally Different but Much Better. No: it’s straightforward evolution.

This is what

…

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Also posted in Op-eds | 2 Comments
David Allen

Opinion: A Local Philosophy for the Lib Dems

By David Allen | Sat 5th December 2009 - 10:45 am

The message from Paul Holmes MP at Regional Conference was clear. If, perchance, some of us felt that the national Lib Dems were not presenting a very strong narrative these days, then it would be up to us locals to make up for them. We needed to demonstrate a distinctive appeal at local level.

Well, in the course of gaining a 19% swing* from the Tories at a Rushcliffe by-election last month, I think we did just that.

We had all piled in to a small rural ward and put out five leaflets. So we did expect to make progress. However, if our Focuses had simply reported local news, I suspect it wouldn’t have been a 19% swing. Our crucial extra, I believe, was to explain a clear local philosophy and put it into practice. This helped people understand what we are about and why it was worth voting for us.

First, let me say what we didn’t do. We didn’t argue that devolving every decision down to parish level was the answer to life, the universe and everything. We didn’t go in for overblown sixties rhetoric about community politics and how “Focus” was more revolutionary than the Kalashnikov. But equally, we didn’t just limit our vision to street-level drudgery and getting pavements fixed.

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Chris White

Whitehall whips Wirral in off-the-shelf smackdown

By Chris White | Mon 30th November 2009 - 4:15 pm

There is no local controversy which cannot be worsened by central government intervention.

Not many political parties say much about libraries in their manifestos. And they don’t tend to get raised as an issue on the doorstep – potholes, litter, crime and the level of council tax are much more popular topics.

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Also posted in Op-eds | 8 Comments
Alex Foster

Opinion: Nation’s campaigners kickstarted

By Alex Foster | Mon 30th November 2009 - 3:53 pm

ALDC Kickstart: Councillor @alexfoster in a feedback session with his local team

Yesterday saw the conclusion of ALDC‘s annual training event Kickstart, designed for councillors and campaigners who are defending and targetting council seats at next year’s local elections.

Next year is a special year indeed, because in all probability the General Election will happen on the same day as local elections. Whilst this is nothing new, the councils that are facing election this time are …

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Also posted in Events and Op-eds | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Even top Tory admits their shadow cabinet “haven’t run a piss-up in a brewery”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 28th November 2009 - 7:30 am

The Public Finance website reports the comments of Stephen Greenhalgh, Tory leader of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and head of the Conservative councils’ innovation unit, at a debate two days ago:

‘My mates are all in the shadow Cabinet, waiting to get those boxes, being terribly excited. I went to university with them, they haven’t run a piss-up in a brewery,’ he said.

‘They’re going to get a department of state, in one case running the finances of the nation.’

Greenhalgh pointed to other countries, such as France and the US, where members of the government had typically

…

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The Voice

Lib Dem councillor expelled over police assault charges

By The Voice | Sat 28th November 2009 - 1:06 am

The Isle of Wight County Press Online has the story:

CALLS for a Lib Dem councillor to be expelled from the party have been made this week after it was confirmed 37-year-old Adrian Whittaker was alleged to have assaulted a police officer.

The calls were led by Island party vice-president and long-serving executive member Morris Barton. He said: “It is the party’s AGM tomorrow (Friday) and I am sure Cllr Whittaker’s expulsion from the party will be on the agenda. If Cllr Whittaker is subsequently convicted we will be seeking the Isle of Wight Council leader Cllr David Pugh’s support for

…

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Stephen Tall

Is downloading porn a reason to disqualify a councillor?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 25th November 2009 - 2:25 pm

The BBC has this local story:

A former Somerset councillor has been disqualified from holding office after “illegal and pornographic material” was found on his council-owned laptop. Andrew Woolley was elected as a Liberal Democrat councillor for the Lyngford Ward of Taunton Deane Borough Council in May 2007. Due to the nature of the material found on Mr Woolley’s laptop it was referred to the Adjudication Panel for England. The panel ruled that he be disqualified from holding office for two years. …

During the time he was in office he was given two council-owned laptops to help him in his

…

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Chris White

Scope for a public spending revolution?

By Chris White | Tue 24th November 2009 - 2:54 pm

One seemingly obvious question – who spends most on local services – has in this country a rather disappointing answer.

It is not just that we always suspected central government in this overcentralised country spent more than local government – the astonishing thing is how much more.

We already knew that the Government Office for London actually spends more than the London Mayor, despite some real devolution of important responsibilities. But recent research shows that for an average of £7,000 of spend on public services in any one place, only £350 is discretionary spending by local authorities.

Clearly this doesn’t feel …

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Also posted in Op-eds | 1 Comment
Iain Roberts

Iain Roberts 4MP

By Iain Roberts | Tue 24th November 2009 - 10:51 am

No, not my campaign to enter the hallowed halls of Westminster – much to the relief of my colleagues who undoubtably feel they get more than enough of me on the council.  Besides, I’m lucky enough to already have an excellent Lib Dem MP.

This is a new feature on the ALDC MyCouncillor blog service.

ALDC, the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors, offers a handy blogging service for all members.  It’s based on the popular WordPress platform and customised to help busy councillors and campaigners get blogging with the minimum of fuss.  Over 500 people already have an ALDC MyCouncillor …

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Also posted in Online politics | Tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Adding some colour to council emails

By Mark Pack | Tue 24th November 2009 - 10:20 am

The November edition of Total Politics has the second in a series from me on councils and communicating. The first part, Yes, council websites can, looked at lessons from the Obama campaign for local council use of the internet. This piece now looks at email in more detail.

In October’s Total Politics I wrote about the broad lessons councils can learn from Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign, for both councils and election campaigns need to communicate successfully online with large numbers of the public.

Despite this similarity of aim, many of the internet techniques which are now second nature to most political campaigns are still almost unknown in local councils. As I wrote of one example, “Whilst for political websites the email sign-up box is a near ever-present feature, on council websites it is almost never there.”

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Also posted in Online politics | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Are local council boundaries set to change?

By Mark Pack | Fri 20th November 2009 - 11:10 am

That’s what the Electoral Commission is suggesting in its ‘farewell’ press release to mark the handing over of responsibilities for local government boundaries to a new body:

Max Caller, Chair of the Boundary Committee and Electoral Commissioner, said: “The new Local Government Boundary Commission for England’s job will be to keep the map of local government in England in good repair. Having fair local electoral arrangements is important to ensure that every voter, wherever they live in a council area, has a vote of similar weight in electing their representatives.

“We estimate that, by 2014, a quarter of all English local

…

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Chris White

Queen’s speech not much fun for local government either

By Chris White | Thu 19th November 2009 - 5:32 pm

The Government has long had a knack of turning a good idea into an operational nightmare. One case in point is the Queen’s Speech proposal for personal care at home. The Prime Minister has given an undertaking to find a way of ensuring that older people with the highest needs can remain at home, regardless of means.

The bill will attempt to help 400,000 people (‘guaranteeing’ free personal care for 280,000 and providing assistance to 130,000 others). Difficult to argue with? In the small print not covered by the nationals screaming about the General Election is the fact that this will …

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Stephen Tall

Watford’s liberal Lib Dem Mayor – what Iain Dale didn’t report

By Stephen Tall | Thu 29th October 2009 - 1:40 pm

Tory blogger Iain Dale should perhaps have paused before clicking ‘publish’ on his latest – highly inaccurate – post, How Very Illiberal of a LibDem Mayor. Those few seconds’ hesitation would have been sufficient for him to do a quick Google and find out what he was about to write was nonsense.

In his article, Iain recycled a Metro report to allege that Watford Borough Council (run by elected Lib Dem mayor Dorothy Thornhill) has “barred from public playgrounds in parks. Instead, they are forced to wait outside the railings whilst council-employed “play facilitators” assist the children.”

Iain describes the …

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